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The Bermuda Triangle

A large ‘triangle’ of water near ‘Bermuda’. Ships and planes routinely go missing in its vicinity.

THE STARS:

If there are two things that people are scared of, it’s sharks and maths tests. In the mysterious geographical location known as ‘The Bermuda Triangle’ both these fears are combined into one terrifying enigma. Don’t be too literal: I’m not talking about a finned nightmare that pulls you deep into it’s ocean lair in order to grade your algebra skills – not this time. Rather, instead of getting sidetracked like an old one-eyed hen, pecking vainly at its own feet, we have to consider the cold hard facts. The two incontrovertible truths about the Bermuda Triangle is that it’s mostly water and that it’s a triangle. Now, lots of things are water, so I’m going to remove it from my list of suspects. Go home, water. Go home and think about how lucky you are. You’ve got a bright future ahead of you, a loving family of Hydrogen and Oxygen waiting anxiously for you. I don’t want to see you hanging around this kind of bad crowd anymore. That’s right – a bad crowd like triangles.

Triangles have always been the most sinister of the shapes. Three points, three sides, yet not always equally defined. It’s often thought that the triangle is the only shape that doesn’t occur naturally – which is only partially correct. Sometimes snakes will band together with three of their brethren, and form triangles to lay traps for curious birds.

This is what happened to Happy Feet.

What’s my point, you say, stroking your autographed photo of the pyramids. My point is that triangles are unnatural and evil mathematical constructs.

For anyone who has ever suffered the pain and horror of biting a corn chip the wrong way, this comes as no surprise.

YUM!

But there’s no point in simply declaring a pogrom against anything triangular in your house, frantically burning your old admiral hats and wedges of cheese. We have to track the problem to its source and discover the people who impose triangles upon us – namely, mathematicians. These foul logic-wizards are like a plague upon society. They’re in our schools and neighbourhoods. That middle aged woman with the iron-gray bob and functional shoes buying artichokes from the super market? She doesn’t look like it, but she’s a mathematician. If you stare deep into her eyes, you can see the swirling chaos of geometrical patterns looking right back at you. Nobody really knows how long the mathematicians have been amongst us, but it’s happening. And they have their triangle pushing agenda in full swing.

LACK OF STARS:

Well, I’m not advocating an international purge of mathematicians. For better or worse they’ve fully integrated themselves into society. Nor, at least in this lifetime, will we ever successfully ban the triangle. It’s an insidious shape, able to coax a solid square or a weak dodecahedron into relaxing its guard and making the change into geometric evil. But we should at least be able to deal with the gaping symmetrical maw that is the Bermuda Triangle.

My theory is that the pilots of the ships and aircraft that are lost in the Triangle, are simple folk whose minds are simply unable to grasp the unnatural complexity of a mathematical construct. Think about it – probably in day-to-day lives their handicap goes unnoticed. Maybe they’re aware they have a violent aversion to Toblerone, but put it down to their enormous hatred of Swiss produce, rather than triangles. But the Bermuda Triangle – is there any triangle so large and all encompassing? Even the pyramids are tiny three dimensional cousins to its majesty. So, it’s no wonder that upon entering it’s awful influence, these people would go insane or perhaps explode in a cloud of logic.

“Chhhk – This is FlavourHawk to Base, I seem to have noticed some kind of geometric construct beneath me, it looks suspiciously like a… OH, GOD NO! *SPLARKACHUNK*

How do we stop this travesty, you scream, your teeth loose with outrage. Simple. I declare we rename ‘The Bermuda Triangle’ to ‘The Bermuda Amorphous Blob’.